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Ladder reset and release of patch 1.13 tomorrow, the 23rd March.

Unless Blizzard was referring to 23rd March next year....

No inventory boost and some skill changes. Nothing really of merit besides respecialization, and that's not enough of a selling point for me to reinstall the game. Even a poll on DIII.net expresses the disappointment over this patch.


I've copied and pasted the new patch notes for those that may be interested.

A new Mystery has been revealed!

- Adventurers of Sanctuary are hereby warned once again, that a new challenge
awaits you. Within Diablo's Bosses, spanning across the world from the
ancient Monastery Catacombs to the Throne of Destruction, is where you'll
find what you seek...


Major Bugs

- Fixed an item dupe bug.
- Video improvements for Intel Mac machines with OS 10.5 or greater.
- Fixed an issue where some players could kill other players while in town
("TPPK").
- Fixed an issue where some players could disconnect other players when
they had too many active states.
- Fixed two issues where players could stack auras in an unintended way.


Minor Bugs

- Uber Mephisto now checks for both Uber Baal and Uber Diablo to be killed
before spawning summoned minions (Before he would only check for Uber Baal).
- The game will no longer stop and then restart the game music after the
window loses and then regains focus.
- Fixed an issue where the game window would minimize when running in
windowed mode when it lost focus.
- Fixed an issue where the game window wouldn't center properly when it
was created.
- Fangskin should now properly drop loot in Hell difficulty.
- Fixed an issue where auras were not re-applied to your mercenary after
it was resurrected.
- Fixed an issue where if you had two items which provided auras to
a mercenary and you unequipped one, the aura from the remaining
item never became active.
- Fixed an issue where the Paladin class runeword 'Principle' wasn't
having all of its stats applied properly.
- Fixed an issue where the Paladin's Charge ability would become locked
out if Holy Shield faded while charging.
- Fixed an issue where the Barbarian's Leap ability could become locked
out if they were hit when they started to leap.


Specific changes/improvements

- Respecialization is now possible! Completing the 'Den of Evil' quest
will now additionally reward 1 free respec which can be saved. Players
who have already completed this quest should receive 1 free respec in
Hell difficulty.
- Increased the drop rate of high runes.
- Support for blit scaling in windowed mode. The game can now be
maximized to the largest 4:3 resolution supported (hooray widescreen users).
- Some rare drop items now have an orange color. i.e. Runes and items
required for Uber Tristam.
- Modified the gold bank limit to be a flat cap not bound by level.
- Removed the requirements to create a hardcore character.
- Greatly reduced the explosion damage dealt by Fire Enchanted monsters.
- Uber Mephisto and Uber Baal's summoned minions no longer give experience.
- Removed Oblivion Knight's Iron Maiden curse.
- Hellfire Torch Firestorm proc rate has been reduced to 5%.
- Users can now toggle the display of text over the Health and Mana
globes by clicking on the bottom area of each orb.
- When creating a single player game, each difficulty button is now bound
to a unique key: Normal 'R', Nightmare 'N', and Hell 'H'.
- The 'Enter Chat' Button in the battle.net waiting room is now
bound to the 'Enter' key.
- Added the windows system buttons to the game window (MIN, MAX, CLOSE).
- Added new command line parameter '-nofixaspect' which allows users to
not fix the aspect ratio to 4:3 when maximizing in windowed mode.
This lets the game 'stretch' to fill your monitor.
- Added support for '-sndbkg' command line switch. This enables sound
in background.
- Added the following aliases for pre-existing command line options,
'-nosound', '-window', and '-windowed'.


Revised Skill balance for Player Character classes


Amazon

- Immolation Arrow - Increased radius of Explosion effect by 33% and
Immolation effect by 50%.
- Immolation Arrow - Explosion effect damage increased by 20%.
- Immolation Arrow - Increased base duration by 33%.


Assassin

- Dragon Claw - Synergy receives 4% additional damage per point of Claw Mastery.
- Dragon Talon - The bonus to Attack Rating per point has been increased to 35.
- Shadow Master - Increased resistance range per point from 5-80 to 5-90.
- Combo points awarded by combo moves now last 15 seconds, up from 9.


Barbarian

- Whirlwind - Reduced initial mana cost by 50%.
- Masteries - Changed critical strike chance from 0-25 to 0-35.


Paladin

- Blessed Hammer - No longer ignores resistances of undead and demons.


Druid

- Werebear - Damage bonus increased by 15% across all ranks.
- Werebear - Increased health by 25% and armor by 1% per point.
- Shockwave - Synergy from Maul adds 5% damage per point.


Necromancer

- Blood Golem - Removed negative shared life effect (player no longer
loses life when the golem takes damage).
- Corpse Explosion - Increased base damage dealt from 60% - 100%
to 70% - 120% of corpses health.
- Poison Nova - Increased base damage by 15%.


Sorceress

- Firewall - Synergy receives 1% damage per point of Inferno and
4% per point of Warmth.
- Blaze - Synergy receives 1% damage per point of Firewall
and 4% per point of Warmth.
- Hydra - Increased base damage by 15% per rank.
- Hydra - Increased base speed of Hydra projectile.
- Hydra - Reduced cooldown by 25%.

Spoiler Alert

How do the essences work, what do they do, and where can they be found?

From what I heard, the essences can be dropped by Act bosses. Combining each Act essence in the Cube is supposed to provide another respec.

Some information that I found from a different source is below.

About the respec system, it doesn't say that in hell difficulty each act boss has now a chance to drop some kind of essence. If you combine 4 of the same essence in the cube, it will transform into a t-shaped charm which you can use to respec.
This way, high level characters will be able to have more than 1 respec, and the essences might become something valuable for trade.

I do remember hearing that now that you mention it. I love the respec aspect of the game but this seems alittle weak. I think 3 would be plenty and they could have come up with something better for them but thats just my lowly opinion.

The essences work similar to the keys. They drop from the act bosses with a ratio of approximately 1/13 (Andy and Duriel drop the same essence). You cube them, and get a 4th respec. Pretty lame as a "mystery quest" reward since you already have 3 respecs from the Den of Evil at each difficulty. However, the respec feature is neat!

Ah crap, I think I am gonna reinstall and start up an mf barb on classic. No iron maiden jeez, must resist ah lol.

Without the Iron Maiden curse, I call it the 'I'm too stupid to pay attention to status effects' patch. Too much of a nerf ball for something that just requires patience. Yeah, let's run Diablo now with even less challenge. FAIL.

I will never abandon patch 1.09d in all its glory.

flix wrote:I will never abandon patch 1.09d in all its glory.

How do u avoid new patches? I believe mine updates automatically.

You play offline, that's how

fullautomatic55 wrote:You play offline, that's how

Sounds boring